RAF Sculthorpe is a military training facility for the United Kingdom's Ministry of Defence, situated about 3 mi (4.8 km) west of Fakenham in Norfolk, England. The airfield has been home to many visiting airmen and support crews of the RAF and United States Air Force. Whilst retaining the airfield in 1997 the Ministry of Defence sold the entire technical, domestic and administrative site including the married quarter site previously occupied by the USAF to The Welbeck Estate Group.

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RAF Sculthorpe was built as the second satellite airfield of RAF West Raynham a few miles to the south, the first being RAF Great Massingham. Work was begun in the spring of 1942 and the airfield was laid out as a standard RAF heavy bomber airfield with concrete runways, dispersals site, mess facilities and accommodation. Much of the construction work was completed by Irish labour working for the construction company Bovis.

In January 1944 100 Group Royal Air ForceNo. 214 Squadron RAF moved in with Boeing Fortress aircraft for use in electronic warfare support of Bomber Command to be joined by crews from the USAAF 96th Bomb Group from RAF Snetterton Heath, known at Sculthorpe and thereafter as the 803rd Bomb Squadron of the USAAF. In April 1944 the 803rd and 214 Squadron departed for RAF Oulton leaving Sculthorpe empty for its redevelopment as a Very Heavy Bomber Base with the work not being completed until the spring of 1946.

The Soviet Union's enormous conventional force in eastern Europe posed a major problem for NATO due to the Soviets maintaining high personnel levels after World War II when most of the American and British forces had demobilized.

To counter this Soviet threat to western Europe, NATO decided to expand their tactical nuclear force by introducing the North American B-45 Tornado to the UK. The US Tactical Air Command had about 100 of these four-engined jet bombers, each capable of dropping five tactical nuclear bombs. In the summer of 1952, the Pentagon decided to deploy the 47th Bomb Wing to Sculthorpe from Langley Air Force Base, Virginia. The movement of the 49th AD, 47 Bomb Wg and the 20th FB WG was the first unit deployment since World War II.

From 1954 to 1958, the 19th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron also flew the reconnaissance version of the B-45 known as the RB-45. The 19th TRS was assigned to the 47th Bomb Wing from May 1954 to December 1958. When the 19th began to re-equip with RB-66's during 1957, its RB-45's were transferred to other squadrons of the 47th Bomb Wing.

By 1957, carrying 10,000 personnel it was the biggest USAFE base in Europe. In May 1958, the re-equipment of the 47th Bombardment Wing began and Douglas B-66 Destroyers began to replace the B-45s. With this equipment change, the 47th's squadrons was redesignated Bombardment Squadron (Tactical).

During 1960–1962 the 47th also performed air refueling missions assigning KB-50J tankers to the 420th Air Refueling Squadron from 15 March 1960 to 22 June 1962. The KB-50s were specially equipped with two General Electric J47 turbojet engines that enabled the tankers to match the speed of the faster jet fighters during refueling; however most of the KB-50s were more than fifteen years old and were too slow to refuel the faster tactical jets of USAFE. The 420th ARS was inactivated on 25 March 1964.

During the summer of 1984 the F-4E and F-4G squadrons from Spangdahlem AB,West Germany operated from RAF Sculthorpe to allow runway re-surfacing at Spangdahlen to take place.

During most of 1988 and part of 1989, deploying C-130 units from the 463rd TAW (Dyess AFB, TX), the 314th TAW (Little Rock AFB, AR), and the 317th TAW (Pope AFB, NC) were forced to operate from RAF Sculthorpe due to runway resurfacing at RAF Mildenhall.

In August 1989 the TR-1A squadron from RAF Alconbury operated from RAF Sculthorpe whilst Alconbury's runway was re-surfaced.

The airfield became inactive at the end of the Cold War. During the mid 1990s the entire technical and domestic site was sold to The Welbeck Estate Group by Defence Estates. The domestic married quarter site comprised a sizeable number of single storey 'tobacco houses' The housing estate was renamed 'Wicken Village' and following refurbishment the houses were sold. The remaining technical site including single personnel barrack blocks, PX, church, guardroom, gymnasium, community centres and extensive storage and industrial units were sold to a single purchaser and there is now a fledgling industrial park. The Welbeck Estate Group went on to acquire the nearby technical and married quarter estate at RAF West Raynham which formed just part of 36 ex military estate acquired from Defence Estates.

The airstrip area remains in military hands, officially as an army helicopter training area, and there are exercises about twice a year. Demolition work on the hangars began in March 2009.

The airfield is used most nights by the 352nd Special Operations Group, from RAF Mildenhall. They are there with MC-130P and MC-130J Hercules aircraft, along with CV-22 Osprey Tilt Rotors. They practice dropping of paratroops and packages amongst other special tasks.

The only buildings that remain are: The Control Tower, The Fire Station buildings (Next to the Control Tower) & a small half moon concrete shelter (Now used by a herdsman for machinery & equipment storage - There are up to 2000 cows on the grass areas)